A very interesting thought-chain from Anil Kumar Sharma over at RVG, who talks about The Organized Retail Hoodwink. The point made being that organized retail is under-reported, and the 2%, 18,000 crores organized retail segment size have become the biblical numbers just like the always-quoted McKinsey-Nasscom figure of 50 billion US$ IT industry size by 2008.
"Most of the international retailers consider Indian retail to be "backward" and "unorganized" primarily because of the perceptions created by our own retail gurus.
A certain report published recently as the "India Retail Report" states that the size of food & grocery retail in India is Rs 6,15,000 crores. The same report goes on to say that 99 percent of this is dominated by kirana stores. If you look at the figures of only a couple of retail chains, you would realize the fallacy of this statement and figures. Consider, the Fair Price Shops of the government have a total turnover of Rs 14,000 crores and canteen stores/ department stores have a turnover of Rs. 5,600 crores, and Kendriya Bhandars about Rs 300 crores. This is about Rs 22,000 crores, which is almost 4 percent of the total. "